The company has confirmed a number of issues during the migration process

Jul 29, 2014 09:46 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft wants all users of Windows Server 2003 to upgrade as soon as possible, as the server software will soon reach end of support, but it turns out that a number of issues is making this impossible for the time being.

The company itself has confirmed in a blog post that “weird things can happen” when stepping away from Windows Server 2003, explaining that in some cases when running Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2012 R2 domain controllers that serve the same domain, the Kerberos authentication protocol crashes and doesn’t allow users to log in anymore.

“What we found is that there’s a problem that can manifest when you have Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2012 R2 domain controllers serving the same domain. Since many of you are trying very hard to get rid of your last Windows Server 2003 domain controllers, you might be running into this. In the case of the customers that called us, the login issues were actually preventing them from being able to complete their migration to Windows Server 2012 R2,” Microsoft said.

The company has also explained that it’s already working on a fix, but this “is going to take us some time,” as Redmond said today.

Windows Server 2003 already reached end of mainstream support on July 13, 2010, but extended support is also projected to come to an end next year on July 14.